Mr. Speaker, this is my first term in Parliament. I did not anticipate debating the possibility of Canada participating in a war.
Through the campaign I was asked many questions, but no one asked this question, no one asked about war. What prepares one for a debate such as this and the possible outcome of it? I believe it should be our humanity and our desire for peace that guides us.
Canada should be on the side of those who seek to resolve this crisis through negotiations and diplomacy. There is nothing to be gained in the long run through a strategy of provocation and threats. I join a Yukon resident, Rod Snow, who I just spoke to, who is opposed to the prospect of force. It is an admission of failure, the absolute failure of the world's leaders. It is not an admission I would like to make.
We must approach this extremely critically based on knowledge and based on what we know. It is hard to make decisions on what we do not know. As a parliamentarian I have not been briefed by our government. We have not had any UN representative to brief us. I do not know all the weapons information that there is. Are they there in Iraq? The UN inspectors have not been able to go in and confirm what is there.
What do we know about our Canadian army? Are they prepared? We just heard, as they have just come through the ice storm and assisting people through floods, that their budget is gone, they are understaffed, they face cutbacks, they are underfunded. We can barely give them helmets, a decent wage or even basic housing. There is very little we give them and in return what we are asking our soldiers to give us is possibly their lives.
We do not know what the financial cost of this endeavour will be to Canadians. Is it open-ended? Will we be able to get out? More importantly, can we afford the human cost?
What do we know about Iraq? We know Saddam Hussein is a dictator. We know that he is a gross human rights abuser and that he kills his own citizens. That is no reason for us to believe that it would be better for us kill his citizens than for him to do it himself. That is no reason for us to go in and join a military strike of bombing.
We know that the widows and children of the gulf war are starving and dying daily. There is little if any medicine. The cities are crumbling and the young and the elderly are living under sanctions imposed in part by us. They may have biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but so do other countries.
I would like to know who is arming this dictator. Who is selling the arms? Once again, the UN inspectors have not been able to finish their work.
Our ultimate objective, of course, is peace. What we need to do to reach this is to make sure that the UN inspectors can get into Iraq. If we join this strike as planned by the U.S., not by the UN, if we strike first there is no peace.
What would cause the greatest harm is bombing. We know that the bombs are not precise. We know who will be beneath those bombs: families, mothers, fathers, children, people who have already suffered, who are already starving and dying and who are already living under a brutal dictator.
I have heard over the last few days that what we have here are principles. Our principles are at stake. I believe, more importantly, that lives are at stake. Before we jeopardize human lives by the use of deadly weapons and approve death sentences for many civilians and before we expose our Canadian soldiers to war who may be ill prepared for it, we must make every effort to get UN inspectors into Iraq.
There will be no winners in this war. However, there is time and there are options. We do not have to go to war. We do not have to be pushed into this, especially in such a short time period, January 29 to this date. The pressure is building that we have to join, but we do not have to join.
What we need to do is make sure there is an international team of UN inspectors that excludes the U.S., Britain and possibly even Canada, but inspectors who would be allowed into Iraq to do their work. We could ease the inhumane sanctions that are causing more suffering for civilians and use that as leverage for the UN inspectors to enter Iraq.
I have heard that Canada has an obligation to join its allies and go to war. However, we are not obligated to start a war or to be a part of a war where we know the majority of suffering will fall on civilians. The language has changed so much that the death of civilians is called collateral damage. It is not seen for what it is, torture and death.
What we face is the possibility of damage by Saddam Hussein and the possibility of a threat. Once again, other countries have weapons of mass destruction. This damage and threat can be warded off with diplomacy. As leaders of the country and as members of Parliament, it is incumbent on us to make sure that we use that diplomacy.
We face the certainty of harm in comparison to the possibility of the threat from the country of Iraq. We face the certainty of harm and destruction if we join the U.S. in bombing Iraqi citizens because those are the people who will suffer. Saddam Hussein has shown himself to be very capable of surviving anything. However, it is those who are most vulnerable who will not survive and will suffer further and further.
We also face the unknown that will follow if we do start bombing. There will be a conflagration in that area. It might ignite. It may spread. It may drag on for years.
Most of all, we must seek a humane solution. A humane solution is one where we do the least harm and the most good.
In ending, I would like to thank the Speaker, the pages and the clerk for seeing this debate through to the end and also all my parliamentary colleagues who stayed well into the night. Hopefully this is a debate that we will never have to have again and that it will only happen once in our lifetime.